SITE SELECTION OF A TOWNSHIP USING GIS

Abstract

Site selection of a new town in a region involves a variety of decision factors. In particular, various factors must be assessed to ensure the safety comforts and economy of the residents of that town. These factors typically include items such as slope of land, distance from highways, railways, and proximity to riverfront, existing cities and away from flood area etc. and other environmental and local resource criteria. Planning tasks at present are being carried out by manual methods and it limits the complexity of decision making frameworks since it is difficult to analyze more than a few variables at a time manually. Therefore, there is a need for reliable data as well as comprehensive database pertaining to the physical factors and good analytical tools for efficient and time bound planning. GIS techniques have.the capabilities to efficiently capture, store, update, manipulate, analyze and display all forms of geographically referenced information and can play an important role in analyzing complex situations, timely decisions and evolving suitable methods of arriving at alternative sites for townships. In the present study, an attempt has been made to select a suitable site for developing a new township in Uttar Pradesh by considering different variables and constraints. Use of MGE a GIS software has been made and an overlay analysis performed to propose a new site for a township. Six regions have been identified as probable sites for townships. Although no site was found to satisfy all conditions but site 1 of region 3 has been identified as the best site for locating a new township